Luis Fernández-Galiano   Le Corbusier, the architect who promised us machines á habiter, ended up building machines á emouvoir. The most influential and perhaps the greatest o f 20th-century architects was, above all, a boundless plastic artist, a polyphonic and protean crea

H. Allen Brooks   Young Jeanneret’s apprenticeship was so hazardous and so lacking in a systematic program that it appeared more fitting for a curious young man of the 19th century than for a modem architect. He began studying technical problems very late and even so,

Vincent Scully   Like a romantic symphony, Le Corbusier’s mature work starts off with exquisitely harmonious passages and then grows in an exciting crescendo full of surprises. Vincent Scully takes us through each movement without losing sight of the intimate connect

Luis Fernández-Galiano   In his drawings, Le Corbusier is revealed as nearly a focus that captures, interprets and transmits images that unfailingly belong to an essential or poetic dimension. Throughout his work one can detect a mediating gaze that translates and restructur

Simón Marchán Fiz   In order to understand Le Corbusier’s first villas one must look both to cubist painting and to the enlightened vision of the classical world. The synthesis between the two, according to the author, is mainly manifested in the constant search for a b

Francisco Calvo Serraller   Criticism and historiography have tradicionally presented a split vision of Le Corbusier: on the one had we have the architect, and on the other a plastic artist who stands more or less in the shadow of the former. Calvo Serraller believes that this

Stanislaus von Moos   Despite the Esprit Nouveau’s enthusiasm for Loos’s ideas, in fact Le Corbusier and the Viennese master would in time grow apart. Their initial coincidence arose from their mutual distaste toward the Jugendstil. But their disagreements were centered o

Josep Maria Montaner   European architecture went through major changes as a result of the Second World War, both as concerned the attitude toward the profession and the various positions taken in cultural debates. As the younger generation took over, there were also deep

Antón Capitel   If one wants to discover the lessons taught by a master to his inheritors, it is not enough to merely assemble a list of works more or less similar to those making up the most visible part of the legacy. Often the lessons undergo a transformation, or

Alan Colquhoun   It is not often that a critic or historian comes across such a complex, contradictory and yet self-enclosed progression as that of Le Corbusier. It might appear at first that such a unique oeuvre, one that always stands out in its context and is subj